If private persons accorded the work a hearty reception, a large section of the press greeted it with no les cordiality.  “No previous editor,” said The Standard, “had a tithe of Captain Burton’s acquaintance with the manners and customs of the Moslem East.  Apart from the language, the general tone of the Nights is exceptionally high and pure.  The devotional fervour ... often rises to the boiling point of fanaticism, and the pathos is sweet and deep, genuine and tender, simple and true. ...  In no other work is Eastern life so vividly pourtrayed.  This work, illuminated with notes so full of learning, should give the nation an opportunity for wiping away that reproach of neglect which Captain Burton seems to feel more keenly than he cares to express.”  The St. James’s Gazette called it “One of the most important translations to which a great English scholar has ever devoted himself.”

Then rose a cry “Indecency, indecency!  Filth, filth!” It was said, to use an Arabian Nights expression, that he had hauled up all the dead donkeys in the sea.  The principal attack came from The Edinburgh Review (July 1886).  “Mr. Payne’s translation,” says the writer, “is not only a fine piece of English, it is also, save where the exigencies of rhyme compelled a degree of looseness, remarkably literal. ...  Mr. Payne translates everything, and when a sentence is objectionable in Arabic, he makes it equally objectionable in English, or, rather, more so, since to the Arabs a rude freedom of speech is natural, while to us it is not.”  Then the reviewer turns to Burton, only, however, to empty out all the vials of his indignation—­quite forgetting that the work was intended only for “curious students of Moslem manners,” and not for the general public, from whom, indeed, its price alone debarred it.[FN#494] He says:  “It is bad enough in the text of the tales to find that Captain Burton is not content with plainly calling a spade a spade, but will have it styled a dirty shovel; but in his notes he goes far beyond this, and the varied collection of abominations which he brings forward with such gusto is a disgrace and a shame to printed literature. ...  The different versions, however, have each its proper destination—­Galland for the nursery, Lane for the library, Payne for the study and Burton for the sewers."[FN#495]

Burton’s spirited reply will be found in the last volume of his Supplemental Nights.  Put compendiously, his argument is:  “I had knowledge of certain subjects such as no other man possessed.  Why should it die with me?  Facts are facts, whether men are acquainted with them or not.”  “But,” he says, “I had another object while making the notes a Repertory of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric form.  Having failed to free the Anthropological Society[FN#496] from the fetters of mauvaise honte and the mock-modesty which compels travellers and ethnographical students to keep silence concerning one side of human nature